The Great Television Debate

[Matthew Levy <mlevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon, Ralph, Rustum,
	Having been partly responsible for kicking up what a friend of
mind calls a "shitstorm of ideology", I am going to beg off for now, as
this conversation has been a lot less enlightening than my previous
discussions with Ralph et al. and because I really have other things I
need to be doing.  Let me just make one last parting shot (and if this
will be interpreted as me trying to be right, so be it):  If you believe
that television presents a psycho-political danger to those who watch it,
it behooves you to be able to explain what this danger is and how it works
in ways that take into account both the experience of the person actually
doing the watching and that person's active intelligence in both their
watching of the television and their engagement with your argument.  Also,
in the absence of any really sophisticated understanding of how the human
brain responds to various stimuli, it behooves you to avoid simply
latching onto stray pieces of psychological research which seem to fit
your preconceptions about the dangers of viewing.  Otherwise, you risk
simply reproducing an ideological construct ... the discourse of addiction
... which is widespread in our time and which has historical roots and
social significance which remain uninvestigated here .. surely not a good
example of Frankfurt School methods.  Also, if you want to be convincing
to those who are skeptical of this discourse, you ought to refrain from
centering your analysis around your vitriolic disdain for particular shows
or the people who watch them, as this vitriol will always give your
audience the impression that your critique is rooted in nothing other than
gut reaction.
I recently had the unpleasant experience of being assigned as a teaching
assistant for a course on the dangers of television addiction, taught by a
man with a degree in sociology who struck me as nothing but a
self-promoting new age charlatan; i got to spend the quarter teaching
discussion sections on idiotic books like Jerry Mander's Four Arguments
for the Elimination of Television and watching the professor
(who will remain unnamed) comparing himself to a zen master and
advertising Scientology Workshops to his students, and related bullshit
... and basically nothing that any of you has said is distinguishable from
the arguments he was prone to making.
You know what?  I hate Ally McBeal too, and I almost never watch MTV, and
I can think of lots of things I like better than watching TV ... but that
does not absolve any of us from the task of really thinking through the
cultural forms associated with the bright little box in question.

m@2

"You're not really in love with yourself - you're just in love with the
idea of being in love with yourself"

	- said to me by one of the two little fellas who hang out on
either of my shoulders ... I can't remember which ...